


Endgame, Rewritten

by moonbeamwriting



Category: Avengers: Endgame - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Stucky - Freeform, i wrote this for me but y'all can read it too I guess, stucky fanfic, stucky fanfiction, stucky fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 04:29:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20521949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeamwriting/pseuds/moonbeamwriting
Summary: What if Steve had decided to come back that day in the woods?





	Endgame, Rewritten

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it’s been about four and a half months since Endgame came out, and I think I’ve finally calmed down about it enough to write some coherent sentences expressing how I wish the last scene with Steve had gone down. This is how I would have hoped the Russo brothers would have treated Steve’s ending instead of throwing away seven fucking movies worth of character arc. (In case y'all can't tell, I have some pretty strong feelings about this shit.) Anyway, enjoy!

“Going quantum in three… two… one…”

“... and bringing him back in three… two… one…”

And in a flash of light, Steve is there. He has a small cut across his bottom lip, a ragged tear in the sleeve of his uniform, and a streak of what looks like soot on his left cheek. But Bucky thinks that Steve, standing on the platform in one piece, is the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen.

The humming of the machinery fades, leaving the sounds of the wind and the birds to fill the silence permeating the clearing.

Bucky shifts his weight, suddenly nervous. He doesn’t know what he expects to happen. All he knows is that it’s been decades since he and Steve have had more than a minute together without the impeding threat of Hydra or cryofreeze or the end of the fucking world to break up the conversation. And now, now that it's all over, he’s -- not quite dreading, but something close -- what will happen when they don’t have to stop talking.

And then Bucky has to pull himself back out of his own head, because he’s just realized that Steve has been back for over five minutes now and is still standing on the platform with an empty look in his incessantly lively blue eyes. He’s able to look past his initial relief of seeing Steve here and safe and see the raw emotional and physical exhaustion that’s now so obvious in every aspect of his being.

Something in Bucky’s chest twists painfully as he takes in Steve’s posture, soldier-straight as always but clearly so close to shattering. His voice is almost quiet enough to be carried away by the soft breeze as he all but whispers, “Steve?”

At first, the soft utteration elicits no response from the platform, and Bucky has just opened his mouth to speak again when Steve takes a sharp breath in, head falling forward and shoulders slumping from their rigid position. And before he can blink, Bucky is stumbling backwards as Steve all but falls off the platform into him, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s chest tight enough to grind his ribs together.

It takes him a moment to process, but as soon as Bucky regains enough breath and brain function to react he’s hugging Steve back without hesitation, letting Steve press his face into Bucky’s shoulder as he lets out a long, shuddering breath. Bucky holds Steve as he struggles to calm his breathing, wanting to do more to comfort him but at the same time not sure if he should.

Steve’s breathing slowly returns to normal and Bucky is just beginning to loosen his grip on the fabric of his uniform when Steve says something into the collar of Bucky’s suit that he can’t quite make out.

“What?”

Steve gingerly lifts his head from Bucky’s shoulder, just enough to get out the words, muffled but audible.

“I almost stayed.”

His tone is flat, tired and defeated, but when Steve lifts his head fully and takes a small step back, his eyes are alive with more light than Bucky’s seen in years. For the life of him, Bucky can’t understand why, so feeling like a broken record, he repeats, “What?”

Steve sighs deeply, but it sounds more like exhaustion than exasperation. His voice sounds rusty and too small for his body as he begins to speak. “I went back to 1970, you know, to return the Tesseract to Stark,” he begins, and a picture begins to form in Bucky’s mind.

“Everything went as planned, and I was just walking out of the building when I --” Steve closes his eyes, rubbing his forehead and smudging the dirt streaked across it. “-- I saw her. Peggy.” He opens his eyes again, and they’re filled with longing -- though Bucky’s not sure exactly what for.

“I saw Peggy,” Steve continues, “And I almost stayed.”

Bucky lets out a breath, feeling like he just got punched in the stomach. Steve’s always felt out of place in time, he knows that. But another thing he’s always been is altruistic. Even if he’d been given an opportunity to be happy with the woman he loved in the time he had been meant to live in, Bucky’s certain he would give that all up if it risked making anyone else, especially him, unhappy.

Bucky feels his breath begin to quicken and he locks eyes with Steve, his brow creasing as he worries his bottom lip between his teeth.

“Is it -- it is because of me? Is that why you came back?” Bucky sees Steve open his mouth in an attempt to speak, but barrels on, stumbling over his words in his haste. “Because -- because if you came back, then Peggy -- then Peggy would never know a thing. But if you -- if you stayed with her, then would you feel like -- like you’re abandoning me?” Bucky’s sure Steve can feel his heart pounding out of his chest, but he continues blindly, fearing the destination he knows this train of thought will take him to. “Because if you love -- if you love her and you came back so you -- so you wouldn’t hurt me then I don’t want you to end up resent--”

Here Steve succeeds in stopping him with a gentle hand on his shoulder, eyes wide with disbelief. “Resenting you?” He shakes his head slowly. “How could I -- god, how could I ever --” He stops. “Oh.”

Steve takes another step closer to Bucky, keeping the hand lightly on his shoulder to steady -- well, he’s not really sure who. “Years ago, in this timeline, I mean, I got to visit Peggy. She was dying, and I.. well, I guess I just wanted some closure on the whole thing.” He pauses to let out a breath and continues. “And, god, I don’t know what I expected to happen, but all that visit showed me was how much of my life -- or what was supposed to be my life -- I missed out on.”

Bucky swallows convulsively, struggling to speak around the lump he can feel forming in his throat. “But if this was your chance for both of you to have that life that you always wanted then I still don’t understand why you didn’t -- why you didn’t stay.”

Steve shakes his head slowly, and when he speaks again, it’s with a voice that sounds like it belongs much more to his one hundred and five mental years than his twenty or so physical ones. “Peggy… Peggy got to live her life. And she told me, when I went to go visit her, that her only regret was that -- that I didn’t get to live mine.” A small smile crosses his face, but the sad, faraway look remains in Steve’s eyes. “And yes, Peggy was a huge part of my life back then… but she was just that -- a part.” Steve raises his chin to look Bucky in the eye, and his expression is one of nothing but pure honesty.

“You have always, always been there for me. You took care of me when I was sick, you’ve rescued me from more fights than I can count.” Steve takes another deep breath in, and Bucky swears he can see the beginning of tears glistening in the corners of his eyes. “Even when I had nothing, I had you.”

A beat passes, and Steve can see the bewildered, hurt look on Bucky’s face. “So yes,” he continues, “I am staying for you. But not --” He holds up the hand not resting on Bucky’s shoulder, anticipating an argument. “-- because I pity you. I came back because I -- because I --”

Love you. 

The unspoken words hang thick in the suddenly too-quiet forest air.

“The last thing Peggy told me before she died was that we can’t go back.” Steve breaks the silence after a long moment. “Sometimes… sometimes the best thing we can do is start over. And that’s what I want for me -- for us.”

This time, Bucky doesn’t resist the urge to pull Steve into a hug, and he swears he can feel the man trembling . And it’s so different from all those years ago when Steve would shivering due to that week’s fever and Bucky would be practically laying on top of him in their one rickety bed, holding him so tight because he was afraid that if he let go, Steve’s fragile life might just slip through his grasp. Steve can’t tuck his head under Bucky’s chin like he used to, and Bucky doesn’t feel like he might shatter Steve’s bones if he hugs him too tightly.

But it feels so good to have Steve in his arms again after more than seventy goddamn years, and Bucky feels the undercurrent of familiarity despite the glaring differences. So Bucky holds Steve closer, one hand between his shoulder blades and the other across the small of his back. This time, he doesn’t resist the urge to rub small circles into Steve’s shoulder, and he can feel the tension drain from Steve’s muscles as he relaxes into the embrace. “Hey, it’s alright. You’re okay.”

Steve sniffs, turning his face into Bucky’s neck. Bucky rests his head on Steve’s shoulder, bringing one hand up to rest in the short hair at the base of Steve’s head as he continues speaking. “You’re okay. It’s all over. For the first time since -- god, since 1945 -- I’m here, and you’re here, and nothing is going to take either of us away again.”

“I’m --” Steve’s voice sounds thick, and he clears his throat before speaking into Bucky’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I ever even thought of staying, of leaving you.” Bucky opens his mouth to protest, but Steve presses onward. “I’m here with you because I want to be, and I promise I’m going to spend every day of the rest of our lives proving that to you. And --”

Bucky stops him with a firm shake of his head and a gentle, “Hey.” He ever so slightly tightens his hold on Steve and speaks in what he hopes is a reassuring manner. “You have nothing left to prove to me. Even when the whole world was fighting against me, you were there.” Bucky stops to gather himself, and this time it’s he who has to fight to speak against the threat of tears. “You’ve been there for me just as much as I’ve been there for you. You believed me when no one else did, and there’s no one that I can trust the way I trust you.”

Steve nods shakily in agreement, but Bucky can tell by the way Steve’s breath hitches that he’s not done speaking. “And --” Steve pauses as if he’s not sure he wants to continue.

“Go on.” Bucky pairs the gentle encouragement with a reassuring swipe of his thumb across the back of Steve’s neck.

“-- And I know we’ve still got a lot of stuff to work through, I know that. But there’s nothing between us that could ever make me want to leave you. Because --” Here Steve pauses, and Bucky swears he feels the faint press of Steve’s lips on the side of his neck. “-- because -- I’m with you ‘till the end of the line.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Sorry if it was a little talk-y, but this was honestly written for me to work through my feelings more than anything else. That said, if you liked this, please drop a Kudos or a comment and let me know! Every little bit means a lot! You can also find me and more of my work on Tumblr at moonbeam-writing. Thanks again! <3


End file.
